1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a media processing device that performs a preprocessing operation such as capturing image data with a scanner or writing data to a medium before printing on the medium with a printhead. More particularly, the invention relates to a drive control method for a media processing device that does not increase the media production time even when a printhead cleaning process is performed before a printing process starts.
2. Related Art
Disc duplicators and other types of media processing devices have a media writing mechanism (media writer) for writing data to CDs, DVDs, and similar media, and a printing mechanism (printer) that uses a printhead to print a label on the label side of the medium. When a media production command is input, the data write process of the media writer and the label printing process of the printer are executed sequentially to produce a new disc. To avoid a drop in print quality when printing the label due to clogged ink nozzles, the disc duplicator runs a cleaning process to clean the printhead of the printing mechanism at specified times whenever a certain time interval has passed. Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. JP-A-2000-260172 describes a printer that runs a cleaning process as an interrupt process at the start of the first printing process when a specified time has passed after the last cleaning process.
When the media processing device executes the printhead cleaning process as an interrupt process at the start of the first printing process executed a specified time after the last cleaning process, the time since the last cleaning process could reach this specified time while the write process is executing. In this case, the cleaning process is performed after the write process ends, and the printing process waits until the cleaning process ends. As a result, the actual media production time is increased by the amount of time required for the cleaning process. If the cleaning process is not performed in this case, the print quality of the label may drop.